Scams. So many of these projects are turning out to be scams, and we knew it was coming. This space is perfect for scammers, and perfect for seizing control from the bankers. HitBTC, Cobinhood, Cryptopia, yo never know which exchange is next. Find out what we’ve seen, as well as some other news from across the land.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

Episode 182 Flagship 73

Definitely saw some funny interactions from friends and their fam bc of the 60 min piece. One friend asked if it was time to get "back into bitcoin", another told me his dad was asking about if Bitcoin Cash is good

Apparently it only takes $55 to register a copyright and anyone can make a claim. So really the first headline was really a whole lotta nothing

There was a press release saying the US government recognizes CSW as Satoshi but the US Copy Office did not.

The internet as you know loves petitions so they were swift to make a petition to remove CSW from Bitcoin's white paper

I had never heard of Dave Kleinman before this. I actually just assumed it was Hal Finney. They never even mentioned Kleinman iirc in Beyond Bitcoin. It does seem like CSW was involved in some way as the creator.

New Section - THAT'S A SCAM

Now now, we all love a good Bitconnect joke believe you me but this is not a joke. They are planning on relaunching July 1st. the V2.0 website is up and everything with a countdown.

They are trying to capture the portion of the world that isn't on social media and doesn't know about BCC and their previous fraud. Honestly, this coin is a large part of the reason why CBP was started. To educate the murky and complicated waters that is the crypto landscape. It's tough especially when it feels imaginary. There is no physicality to the coins. And to all you Basic Bitches, please please please let any of your friends and family who have questions about the space to let them know about stuff like this. No one should ever have to lose their life savings on a scam.

Cryptointelligence has reported that Coinfirm, a firm they're partnered with, has done an analysis on HitBTC's wallets and found they likely only have $3M worth of coins stored there. Take the story with a slight grain of salt, as a research firm they want to make sure people use them, but the information appears to be factual.

They talk about red flags, which are the most important in the space.

Proof of Reserves for HitBTC

Big thing here - Per ETH they have in their storage they have $31.5k worth of volume. This is compared to Kraken's $5, Bitrex's $6, and Kraken's $20. In BTC this is even higher - $2.2M - this is compared to Kraken's $1k, Bitrex's $630 and Poloniex's $2900

Withdrawal issues following the new KYC/AML policy introduced by HitBTC

This is ridiculous. Their lawyer David Miller admitted that they invested in Bitcoin with their reserves. Quote - â€œPrior to the April 24th order â€¦ Tether actually did invest in instruments beyond cash and cash equivalents, including bitcoin, they bought bitcoin.â€

They he goes on to act like the courts are being ridiculous and overstepping their boundaries.

Miller argued that the Attorney Generalâ€™s Office wants to have restricted language that limits Tetherâ€™s investments to cash or cash equivalents because â€œthey donâ€™t like some of [Tetherâ€™s] investments.â€ Miller claims the Attorney Generalâ€™s Office is acting beyond its jurisdiction in trying to exert regulatory authority.

He said it was a small amount

Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, said in a tweet that on May 16, 2019, Tether owned 0.076 BTC. Itâ€™s still unclear how much bitcoin the firm has owned historically and in how many addresses. Stuart Hoegner, General Counsel for both Bitfinex and Tether, in a tweet referred to this report as â€œneither breaking (as advertised) nor news.â€

They already had an ICO in 2017 and raised $13, but decided to do another one called DEXON. I imagine it was some kinda DEX in theory,.

THey raised $3M

Sent out tokens, and then started dumping the tokens they had left.

Almost immediately filed for bankruptcy and to be liquidated.

ALl of this happened before the ICO funds were even unlocked to the public sale.

Ran buy a guy named "Popo" for a nickname and called Cobinhood.

Mailbag

I read an article at the Bitcoinist about JP Morgan telling people that "the US-China trade war could boost safe haven currencies.". Do you think it's likely that the weakening yuan will push the Chinese to use crypto as "the" safe haven asset, now that Russia has already bought the gold? - Mili (Discord)

Yeah right you thought we were going to talk about price on a CryptoBasic episode? We talk about all the goings on of the week. From Cryptopia closing and bring liquidated to Bakkt getting clearer with their direction we cover it all this week. Are Whole Foods and Starbucks really taking CryptoCurrency?

What is the Adam Levy Effect? Is it real? Brent roasts a portfolio, and more.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

They're gonna have a daily and monthly settlement contract now. (before it was just daily I believe)

The prices will be using tools that will filter out wash trading detected - but not specific on those tools yet.

They're putting in $35 Million dollars to the clearing house risk waterfall.

They have a custodian in house, but that needs to be approved. They'll be insured, hire cybersecurity firms (hopefully not Gulianais') and compliance firms that specialize in AML and Blockchain analytics.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Decred means Decentralized Credits, and this was a tough nut to crack. The team decided to bring in the big guns and have Richard Red on the show - he's a part of the Decred Team, in so far as he has Decred's DAO pay him for many many things.

He has answers to all of Brent's questions as Brent takes him through the 101 series - Decred, and finds a new coin that he likes a lot.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Binance was hacked, and we have some follow up information for what went down. The team also talk about crypto's future by analyzing poll results. Ethereum releases a test net. The usual Craig Wright BS, and of course we can't go an episode without talking about Justin Sun from Tron. Finally Brent goes on an Epic rant about the scammer Annie Duke.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

provides developers an enhanced experience for building Blockchain apps utilizing Azure Blockchain Service, or even the public Ethereum network. It also enables you to utilize popular, open source Blockchain tools such as Solidity and Truffle.

This took place in January, and the bounty was paid in Feb., but was just disclosed May 2.

Using a single machine, an attacker could send aÂ DDoS attack to all or 51 percent of the [Super Representative] nodes and render TRON network unusable, or make it unavailable

This flaw in TRONâ€˜s wallet allowed all of the networkâ€˜s available memory to be taken up by a single party with just one computer, which would have effectively broken the blockchain during that time

This was discovered by a company / person called HackerOne, and disclosure was just released. They were also paid for one other bug where they were paid double the bounty that they haven't disclosed the nature of.

BINANCE HACK (Brent)

Just want to do a quick follow up about the thought of a re-org

CZ Basically said something stupid on his live stream

He took it back within the hour.

You do need to reset your 2FA keys

Also disable any API keys you have, and maybe re-enable if you trust them?

Last week the court ordered Wright to disclose bitcoin addresses that belonged to him before 2013....which remember he claimed to have mind the first 70 blocks

So.....

He turns in a list of the 70 addresses, it was redacted & unsealed

This is what his lawyer writes regarding the addresses...

Dr. Wright knows that he mined the first 70 blocks on the blockchain. Because the public addresses associated with blocks are publicly available, Dr. Wright is able to identify the public addresses associated with the first 70 blocks on the blockchain and provides those public addresses below.

First they point out we have no reason to believe these bitcoins even exists

Basically Wrights claim is he didnt remember the addresses...but he can share them since they are one the blockchain and he mines bitcoin

We know because even though list is redacted the addresses match up perfectly

"It beggars belief, for the self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin to act so ignorant about the fundamentals of his invention. Perhaps Wright thinks that being a bitcoin miner means pointing at bitcoins and yelling "Mine!"?

Reggie Fowler is somehow connected to this. He used to play football years ago and was an owner of the Vikings.

The accusation is that Fowler opened a bunch of bank accounts to make it easier for Bitfinex to move money around. The connection was made because modernconsensus.com noticed the bank account was one of Fowler's in the actual indictment.

There was another warrant issues for a Israeli citizen named Ravid Yosef. Shes also a dating coach.

Fowler has had a few other scandals (He's been sued 36 times) and accusations, but this one in particular is saying that he worked with Yosef to run a "shadow bank" to process US based payments. Their charges are conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

There's even chats out there where the owner of Bitfinex is asking the company CryptoCapital for millions of dollars - even yelling at them for not sending any money this month. CryptoCapital is the company that these bank accounts from the Football player and Dating coach are linked to.

When Fowler was arrested he had $14,000 worth of fake $100 bills at his office.

There's also possible ties to both Colombian Cartels and Quadriga which we won't get into, but the links are in the shownotes if you want to learn more - this all centers around CryptoCapital

Ethereum 2.0 is an upcoming new Eth chain with improvements in security, scalability, and decentralization.

Shards are a core concept behind Eth 2.0. Sharding refers to splitting the entire Ethereum network into multiple portions called shards. Each shard would contain its own independent state, aka a unique set of account balances and smart contracts. It will help scale

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Binance was hacked, this is not a drill. Guess what? Everything is fine. Adam and Brent decide to talk abou this for a quick episode of the podcast, and of course, there's some Jutin Sun bullshit thrown in on the top of it all.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

DescThis week's top story - Tether is in trouble again. Is this a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing like the Bitcoin Maximalists such as Adam Back would like you to believe? Or is there something more going on here? Before we get to that story we talk about Vitalik, Elon, some scams and more.ription

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

Episode 177 - Flagship 70

This week's top story - Tether is in trouble again. Is this a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing like the Bitcoin Maximalists such as Adam Back would like you to believe? Or is there something more going on here? Before we get to that story we talk about Vitalik, Elon, some scams and more.

Rapid Fire

Coinbase Custody now offers their first chain swap with KIN. Offline storage and insurance coverage

Elon Musk on Monday sent out a one word tweet, Ethereum. Then apparently said jk. Then Vitalik got involved and said to come to Devcon in Denver. THe internet erupted. How absurd is it that someone can just say one word on the internet and have the internet in an uproar.

Then Elon asked what should be developed on Ethereum and Vitalik replied with a mini tweet storm on projects with different use cases he likes on the Ethereum platform

Literally he took everyone's money, gambled it via a bad call on Margin trading, and then sent a letter saying that he'd totally get everyone their money back. He just needed to clear his head so that he could trade in a stress free environment. Timeline - 5 Months. LOLOL

Article based on a report by company called CipherTrace, 'Q1 2019 Cryptocurrency AML Report'

Estimates $356 million stolen, and payments from US based exchanges to offshore crypto wallets up 46%

$16m from Cryptopia in January

CoinBene and DragonEx (Singapore) combined $46m in March (ETH backed)

Bithumb in S Korea $13m in EOS stolen and (allegedly) another $6m in Ripple

Company described it as an "accident involving insiders" lol

Coinbin also S Korea forced into bankrupcy after loosing $26m, blamed an insider

And then there's QuadrigaCX...

The report 'tentatively' categorized the $190m as theft as opposed to hack or exit scam

Bottom line this money has to be cashed out in innovative ways to turn it into cash, and a lot of ways to exit US and European jurisdictions.

Article concludes with a warning that "A tsunami of tough, global antimoney laundering and counter-terror financing regulations will â€œroll overâ€ the cryptocurrency ecosystem throughout the coming year",

Even links to an article showing Finland just recently adopted AML regulation for crypto

BOA secured a patent on April 30 for a cryptocurrency risk detection system.

On the basis of the system, a risk score will be levied on cryptocurrency transactions between a customer and a third party.

'Processor' would receive request for transaction with third party, then it can "perform a slew of functions, retrieve blockchain information, determine the value of crypto in the transaction or calculate the â€œrisk scoreâ€ of the transaction based on the preceding factors."

BOA also filed for a patent for crypto storage system for business transactions (Aug 2018)

CMC blocks explorers much like etherscan which will help users have more visibility into the blockchain

merch shop

finally have an Android app

ios updated version (so the search function ACTUALLY works)

Main Story - Tether situation - Brent

The NY Attorney General released a statement saying that, among other things, Bitfinex used Tether to mask a missing $850 Million of their assets.

The response to the NYAG releasing this from Tether? Decidedly hand wavey - First it was from Bitfinex not Tether, but they're the same. They basically say that the money was "seized" and not hidden. They're setting up for the ol' "if they hadn't said anything it all would have been fine" defense.

Lets do a recap of the Tether red flags, YES red flags.

The original white paper is unequivocal in the backing of Tether - it will be backed on a 1:1 basis

The Paradise Papers leak showed that Phil Potter and Giancarlo Devasini are both a part of There and Bitfinex.

$30 Million dollars was "Stolen" but don't worry Tether won't be redeeming those Tethers so it's all fine.

They hired and fired an auditor named Friedman LLP.

They took any promise of getting audited out of their FAQ.

A few months ago we reported this but it bears mentioning again - Tether took down it's 100% backed statement and replaced it with a new one. "Every tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, â€œreservesâ€). Every tether is also 1-to-1 pegged to the dollar, so 1 USDâ‚® is always valued by Tether at 1 USD."

Now it gets even worse.

The Lawyer for Tether has admitted to the court in plain english that as of April 30, Tether is only about 74% backed by fiat equivalents, which is cash and short term securities.

It looks like this "seized" amount is a line of credit from Tether to Bitfinex, which is most likely going to function as one of those cash equivalents.

Tether did say that the terms of this credit line were negotiated "on an arms length basis on commercially reasonable terms"

Both agreements were singed by the same guy - Giancarlo Devasini.

Attorneys are arguing that Tether doesn't have to be 100% backed, it totally says so on the website.

If BSV got delisted because CSW is an asshole, I'm really hoping the community would put pressure on the exchanges to delist Tether.

They aren't.

Bitcoin maximalists like Adam Back seem to be aligned with Tether her, even comparing it to fractional reserve banking saying that it's way better than them. Sometimes the Bitcoin community makes it really hard to like them.

Finally - the ETH wallet on Bitfinex has been drained of 800k ETH in the last week, and they only have 1.1M ETH left. Good luck to all that have funds on there :(

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

On Flagship Friday this week we mostly talk about Binance. It’s almost a full 101 on the topic, but we also go over all kinds of other cubes, including what happens when Karim doesn’t show up for Flagship 69. Check out Brent and Adam only on this Flagship Friday.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

files for patent in cryptocurrency space. The patent is for something called "Cryptokicks". Pure speculation but it could be a way to get shoes on the blockchain so when a shoe changes owners, it is cemented there. Secondary markets are huge with shoe sales. Also, could be an incentive system, reward mechanism so people can get CryptoKicks coins every time they purchase a Nike shoe.

When they actually managed to guess some, they were a little shocked to realize that the wallets had already been emptied.

They found 732 wallet keys with this method

They were all emptied by the same attacker

Their conclusion is that some ETH private keys can be guessed by using cloud computing tech - and this was likely from a wallet provider taking shortcuts in the code and cutting off a lot of the complex parts.

Or that the wallet's code was malicious to begin with.

They were also able to replicate the experiment on Bitcoin, but without finding as many private keys.

"We built a digital ledger using the VeChainThor blockchain, and every interaction of the car will have a stored hash key on the blockchain." - Cihan Albay, Lead of IT Tech Office Singapore BMW Group

This was announced at VeChain's first summit April 18th in San Francisco.

3 blockchain use cases for why BMW - mobility services such as DriveNow & ParkNow to allow users to share cars like what Airbnb has done for the housing market. Supply chain and blockchain can help organize everything. Customers - help with loyalty programs and other financial services

VeChain has successfully gone thru the StartUp Garage, BMW's four month incubator and are working together moving forward

VerifyCar is a vehicle digital passport. Apparently odometer fraud is a big problem in the automotive industry. 1/3rd of all vehicles sold have manipulated odometers in Germany ($3400 fraud per car). This will allow verification of odometer and the maintenance history to be on the blockchain.

Binance coin has been one of the better investments of the year, we agree with a lot of what CZ does, and Binance is in my opinion a trusted exchange.

Here's the thing about the Binance "DEX" It's not really a DEX at all. They are not holding your crypto, but they also do have full control of the trading systems.

In the terms and services it does appear that they can freeze your assets. They might not be able to move them because they don't have custody, but they can stop you from doing so.

It's centralized because it's on a Delegated POS system, and it appears Binance has all the nodes.

Even though it's non-custodial, they DO actually default act as custody of anything that isn't native to the BNB chain.

They do have some interesting governance behind the fees. The community votes on the listing of a coin that has applied to list. The Validators in theory vote like the community has asked. They have 4 vote options, yes, no, no veto, and abstain. If majority is yes it gets listed. Majority is no then it doesn't. If one third of votes are veto, it gets killed.

They have to deposit 1000BNB which they get back if they get a yes vote.

They have to pay 2000BNB to become listed, unclear but I think it goes to the network.

They do intend to implement atomic swaps on the main-net, but they also will be giving their version of BTC tether.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Anthony Lusardi is back on the show and he's here to explain all the different ways that we can attack a blockchain. They're not perfect yet, and there's a lot of work to be done. We're so glad he's back on the show to really drive home some of these points.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

You’ve seen the drama. We’re a little late to the party but we weight in on the ridiculous Craight Wright and Calvin Ayre antics. We stand with Hodlnaut, we stand with Peter McCormack, and we can’t wait to see this court battle for the ages. We also talk about the Satoshi Treasure prize that’s out there, the US states rulings with regards to crypto laws, and talk about Forbes articles because we can.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

Quote from one of the opponents (Wendy Stolyarov, block-chain hardware developer)

While our business does not rely on cryptocurrency, we are concerned that SB195 could unintentionally classify us as a money transmitter because we build hardware wallet technology that enables machine-to-machine autonomous transaction.

So it introduced 'money transmitter license' on crypto companies, also had some additional protections for crypto holders when funds held by third parties

In response ULC issued statement in March asking states to halt legislative procedure while they do further studies on creating a better framework.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Adam "Roothlus" Levy. He's famous in the poker world and he's about to be famous in the Crypto World. Why do you ask? Because he's joining the ranks of the CryptoBasic Podcast. And it's time to talk with him and see what he's like, who he is, and what stories he has to bring to the table in this edition of the cryptobasic podcast.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Coinbase is adding a debit card - is crypto being adopted sooner than we think? Who knows?! We also go over the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange being expelled from his embassy even though we don't know anything about it - and we reiterate that Craig Wright isnt' Satoshi.

HELP SUPPORT THE PODCAST!

Patreon- $1 an episode would be the best thing ever and keeps us afloat.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

UK only, and they have plans to expand to the rest of Europe. No plans to expand outside yet.

Card uses assets directly from your exchange.

It sounds like those cool bank accounts, and it's functioning off of something originally built by a company called Shift Payments, that worked with coinbase funds as a third party. A company called Play Safe is issuing the actual cards.

Basically Bittrex has been operating in NY if I understand it correctly.

This will only affect customers in NYC - but it's honestly concerning.

We've linked to the actual letter from the Bit License division of the NYDFS

They had transactions with Sanctioned countries

They randomly exclude people from their cash monitoring

The board of directors minutes never included any AML/BSA/OFAC issues.

The compliance officer is called out as inadequate.

They say there's a lack of trainig. I've been through AML training, it's a fuckin joke. If Bittrex wasn't even doing that I dunno what to tell them.

They had an audit and presented that report, but refused to explain the process behind the conclusions or the engagement letter between the audit firm and Bittrex. (which is basically a less legalese contract)

Here's the best one. They didn't do customer due dilligence. They had names on accounts such as "Elvis Presley" (ok we can forgive that) "abc-abc" (clearly Roger Ver) "Donald Duck" and plenty of obscene terms.

They were unclear and wishy washy on how to handle corporate customers who may own some percentage of a project or business.

They had a process for listing tokens, but NYDFS pulled 15 random tokens and foudn that some of the founders refused to finish the paperwork, and some of them had no application at all.

"Visit Bitcoin Mexico at Bitcoin.com.mx. We provide well-researched news in Spanish about the state of crypto and blockchain projects in Latin America. Crypto adoption will be led by the developing world! Visite Bitcoin Mexico Bitcoin.com.mx"

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

They list out a bunch of factors that would make it OK to not be a security....then they say "Although no one of the following characteristics of use or consumption is necessarily determinative, the stronger their presence, the less likely the Howey test is me"

To me that literally means nothing...mostly.

The network is fully armed and operational

Holders can use it on the network right away.

The asset is designed to meet the needs of its users, not to feed speculation.

The value should remain stable or depreciate over time (dafuq?) specifically saying don't hodl.

If it's a currency it needs to be used to make payments - like really needs to be used for goods and services without converting it first. That or it's a store of value.

If it represents another good or service it can be redeemed and is pegged to that value.

Economic benefit is incidental.

Marketed in a manner that emphasizes the functionality and not increase in value- and if you'd like to advertise with us please reach out.

Restrictions for transfers are not for speculation but are a part of the use case.

Again "Digital assets with these types of use or consumption characteristics are less likely to be investment contracts."

And "The discussion above identifies some of the factors market participants should consider in assessing whether a digital asset is offered or sold as an investment contract and, therefore, is a security."

There are so many types of virtual currencies â€” like litecoin, ethereum, ripple and, of course, bitcoin â€” that "there's no way that even a fraction of them can survive,"

"in the meantime," if you buy cryptocurrency, "you get no income. It's not a real investment. It's speculation."

Then compares it to the TV "tv worked out but everything that comes out of it we dont want to watch. Palm and Blackberry were fantastic, but Apple came in and took them out. Lycos and Excite were here before Google."

Then Kramer - Bitcoin Mafia, go to Vegas

JP Morgan quote Jamie Dimon "Bitcoin is a fraud"...but dont mention they developed a crypto

Andreesseen Horowitz filed to become a registered investment advisor (RIA) in part to gain flexibility in crypto investing, all 150 employees are registering as financial advisors. Less relevant is the firm is raising 2-2.5 bill growth fund expected to close in the next few weeks.

$87 bill volume, eclipsing the previous record by 16 bill, set in Jan 4th 2018. Last week's average was $31 bill

BTC is now above the 1D cloud on massive volume and flipped bullish for the first time since early 2018. ðŸ¤‘. For all you technicals out there it's called the Ichimoku cloud. First time in 15 months, 442 days to be exact that a positive candle was closed on a chart

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Peter McCormack is a podcaster with a particular love for Bitcoin in the space. He's flown around the globe to interview some of the most important people in cryptocurrency, and he's really done well along the way.

He's interviewed people that won't sit down with anyone else, and he's done so consistently for years. Peter decided he would come on the CryptoBasic Podcast and have a chat with Brent about podcasting, the pressures, the problems, and of course - how he wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Cash App has Bitcoin- If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Today we talk about everything from Formula One Racing to Metamask. Karim, Adam, and Brent are hardly able to even get through a rapid fire section without some commentary, and they go over the dumb and dumber that is the Weiss Ratings on this edition.

Cash App has BitcoinÂ - If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

Episode 169 - Flagship Friday

Today we talk about everything from Formula One Racing to Metamask. Karim, Adam, and Brent are hardly able to even get through a rapid fire section without some commentary, and they go over the dumb and dumber that is the Weiss Ratings on this edition.

They will have nfts in the game. Makes me think youâ€™ll be able to collect cars old and new

What are some of the best games youâ€™ve seen in the blockchain space so far?

Formula One, or their parent company Liberty Media, has not yet responded to confirm the partnership, with it unclear at this stage whether theyâ€™ve just bought the branding rights or whether there is closer collaboration.

Metamask has a setting that makes it non-private. It basically does this to communicate with DApps, but in doing so it basically broadcasts your public ETH address to every website that you access.

They've always had a private mode, but it would make it a little clunkier to operate with the sites that it integrates with (imagine like using radar relay, they already know you have metamask when you go there).

Well the community started to have an outcry about this and doesn't want their address broadcast like this by default.

The crypto world is burgeoning and these companies are looking to recruit employees from comfy positions while making them understand the importance of cryptocurrency as an innovation. Could unexpectedly be very tough

Somewhat of a clickbait title but apparently a lot of exchanges participate in something called â€œwash tradingâ€ where most of the volume on the exchanges are fake. Trading back and forth between the same exchange

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

This episode Brent did a special crossover with Vlad from the Bitcoin Takeover podcast. Obviously based on the name we needed to keep it Bitcoin, and of course say good things about it.

That didn't stop Brent he got some good information in there about altcoins, and even admits he was too harsh on Bitcoin itself. Find out how they feel about BTC across the pond, and maybe learn about some political views along the way.

Cash App has BitcoinÂ - If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

Episode 167 - Flagship Friday

On Today's Episode the team talks about Tether, Binance in Austrailia, and the big news being IBM partnering with Stellar. Is this a real partnership? It probably is, but is it good for Crypto currency? What does it have to do with Ripple and XRP? What kinda cereal are the boys fans of? Find out now.

From Tether's New Terms - "Every Tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, â€œreservesâ€). Every tether is also 1-to-1 pegged to the dollar, so 1 USDâ‚® is always valued by Tether at 1 USD."

They also made a proof of funds page, to make it seem like they're on par with other stable coins that show what they have in reserve...It's the same document from months ago that says they totally had the funds on a specific day.

He decided to say he'd sue anyone that copied his tweets or harassing him.

As you know the internet usually responds well to this.

Bots were popping up left and right with his name on them.

Even Jihan Wu from Bitmain was following the fake CSW account.

Some stupid Tweets by CSW.

He complained about not being in CoinDesk's most influential people in Crypto. Coindesk responded. "But...but...'Satoshi Nakamoto' IS on the list! ;p"

in 2017 he said 2018 was the year of BCH.

He said Bitcoin isn't Trustless earlier in 2018.

Told people who thought Bitcoin was permission-less to go work on EOS.

Said BTC would go down to 1000.

He answered the question "Will you attack your enemies or let them all on their own" with "Yes"

This is it. Screw you Toddler. I am going to undelete my writings. You want competition... screw you. I am going full billionaire mode. You want this. You get it. You asked for this. You will not like what is coming! You think I cannot choose what I prove, to whom.... watch - June 2018

He tweeted in August 2018 some code out as a response to someone saying he couldn't print hello world - it was copy pasted.

Remember that one of Craig's proof attempts that he's Satoshi are from a paper he wrote in "2001" that was very similar to the Bitcoin whitepaper...but it was similar to the 2nd draft that was released not the first lol.

The way their consensus works is that if they do have a downed node, they keep trying until they get consensus. If they don't get it, they try 15 seconds later, then 30, then 60, then 120, then 240 etc.

They is actually based on probability - once a node goes down this starts firing and most of the time it happens on the first try, but it COULD go as high as 10 retrys in a very unlucky scenario which would be over 4 hours.

"When the efforts of the third party are no longer a key factor for determining the enterpriseâ€™s success, material information asymmetries recede. ... the ability to identify an issuer or promoter to make the requisite disclosures becomes difficult, and less meaningful."

A group wrote a letter to the SEC Chairman to see if this was just an opinion or represents position of the SEC

"I agree with Director Hinman's explanation of how a digital asset transaction may no longer represent an investment contract if, for example, purchasers would no longer reasonably expect a person or group to carry out the essential managerial or entrepreneurial efforts. Under those circumstances, the digital asset may not represent an investment contract under the Howey framework."

8% of Americans own cryptoâ€”think it was closer to 1-2% in early 2017

too difficult to understand and too complicated to understand is a solid portion of . I can sympathize as it is not intuitve at all but once you learn it, it becomes second nature. Think going from windows to ios

most are just "not interested"

some say it's too high risk which, fair enough

During the 2017 boom, there were roughly 40k new CB users a week signing up. I'd say 8% seems about right.

"digital token" as â€œa digital unit with specified characteristics, secured through a decentralized ledger or database, exchangeable for goods or services, and capable of being traded or transferred between persons without an intermediary or custodian of value

Crypto Around the World

Mailbag

From the zman in CB Discord:

with all the hype surrounding game of thrones return in april, the BBs were wondering:

There's a special guest on the show - Adam "Roothlus" Levy. He's going to help us navigate these murky waters of scams, bullshit stories, and more. Why is Coinbase losing good will? Why is Kraken gaining it? Why wasn't Brent hired at Kraken? Also - Brent got hacked on this edition.

They had a team that all worked on a project called Hacking Team, which was a startup that specifically aided some shady governments in some authoritarian practices.

They helped surveillance of citizens by selling its project to - Sudan, Bahrain, Venezuela, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan

The UN actually got involved and told them they were selling weapons to Sudan, and they were worried about them being used to target Darfur belligerents. Hacking Team said they never had dealings with Sudan.

After the UN Got involved the Italian government froze any exports that the team could make.

Someone hacked them and their Twitter and release a 400GB data dump, which Wikileaks even retweeted. Dealings with Sudan confirmed, and there was even an invoice to Lebanon. How did "Hacking Team" get hacked? Well their password was P4ssword, and they also used wolverine and universo.

Standard response - don't download that leak it has a virus and it's also all not true (paraphrasing Christian Pozzi, team member). His Twitter was immediately hacked.

As of 2016 they were still allowed to sell spyware...just not outside of the EU. They had 70 clients as of 2015.

They won an award in 2013 - One of 5 Corporate Enemies of the Internet!

Coinbase original statement -It was â€œaware that Neutrinoâ€™s co-founders previously worked at Hacking Team, which we reviewed as part of our security, technical and hiring diligence,â€ adding that â€œCoinbase does not condone nor will it defend the actions of Hacking Team,â€ but â€œit was important for Coinbase to bring this function in-house to fully control and protect our customersâ€™ data and Neutrinoâ€™s technology was the best we encountered in the space to achieve this goal.â€

published a set of reports this week detailing a complex money laundering scheme â€œto channel billions of dollars out of Russiaâ€

over 1.3 million leaked transactions from 238,000 companies,

OCCRP Executive Director Paul Radu elaborated

Among the counterparties on these transactions were major Western banks such as Citigroup Inc., Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank. The dozens of companies in the system also generated $8.8 billion of internal transactions to obscure the origin of the cash.

Citigroup did not respond to a request for comment, Raiffeisen declined to comment, and Deutsche Bank refused to comment for legal reasons, claiming to have limited access to information on the transactions in question.

Troika Laundromat. â€œThe Laundromat wasnâ€™t just a money laundering system. It was also a hidden investment vehicle, a slush fund, a tax evasion scheme, and much more

"In the past 20 years, theyâ€™ve globalized organized crime and autocracy and helped everyone from Mexican drug cartels to Russian President Vladimir Putin to terrorists, autocrats, and almost every global threat,"

Cash App has Bitcoin - If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

It's time for a revisit of a classic villian. Ripple, XRP, Banks, it's known by many names and it was just released on Coinbase. It's had a hell of a year, and honestly has performed less bad than a lot of these coins. Has Brent changed his tune? Will his hatred go down further? Is this a sympathetic villian? How much did Karim call Brent Fat the last time this coin was in the spotlight? Find out now.

Cash App has Bitcoin - If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

Cash App has Bitcoin - If you sign up through that link the show gets $5 and so do you! Stop the presses. The easiest to use money transfer application (yes it's easier than Venmo) now as a built in way to buy and sell Bitcoin. They even have a no - fee debit card you can use.

A reddit named Warith Al Maawali came forward with claims that his entire life savings was lost on Coinomi. He isn't the only reddit user, there's 3 others that all had the same thing happen.

Coinomi is a wallet for anyone not familiar. Their tagline is "Your Trusted Blockchain Interface"

He actually made a website that has all of his proof, screenshots, research, and findings.

The end result is that they were sharing your passphrase with a third party on Google's servers, for spell checking purposes. In plain text. Coinomi claims that it wasn't plain text, and that it was encapsulated inside a HTTPS request.

The user claims that this can only be exploited by whoever created the exploit or anyone else that uses the backend at Google. Coinomi only says Google.

They also say that it was only if you restored a desktop wallet. Also it totally wasn't a bug in their code (what?!) it was a plugin issue.

Based on the screenshot of their e-mail, they did in fact admit that this was a problem. They even told the user he was eligible for a bounty, but they haven't taken any responsibility (at this time) to give him his crypto yet.

This guy says he did everything right - he had it only running on a virtual machine behind a firewall with Anti-Malware and Anti-Virus protection. It was still compromised by a bug.

They even went as far as to say "Don't worry we've blacklisted the funds they'll never get to exchanges".

Guess what? The code wasn't open source.

Coinomi also suggests he saw the problem and stole his own funds, and say that he was holding them ransom by threatening to go public. They also mention Luke Childs, Jonathan Sterling going public with their findings as irresponsible. (again what?!) They call him a blackmailer. They also admit there's an issue.

Coinomi released the entire chat log of their support ticket. Warith was a dick, but they were asking him for a bunch of dumb shit and stalling too.

So basically, in order to blacklist bad actors there's a centralized authority called the ECAF. The ECAF wasn't democratically elected, they were just assigned at inception.

I assume that's the "power vested in me" people.

Basically the 21 block producers were getting annoyed at all the blacklisted addresses that were being submitted and decided it wasn't salable, so they were looking for an alternate solution.

Apparently, this was a vulnerable solution if even ONE of the 21BPs incorrectly setup their blacklist. Games.eos did set it up wrong. So one of the blacklisted accounts with around $7M US was able to spread that money around indiscriminately.

ONE

So much for that.

So what's their solution? They don't have one yet, but they're considering nulling out the keys on blacklisted accounts.

Apparently they've discarded the ECAF - and are getting a new one.

Well, since we're on the topic of EOS - "Another Story Ft. TRON & Sun"

Story starts with a tweet from Sun braging about the rating from The Center for information and Industry Development (CCID)

Apparently some of this rating is because of TRONs large transactions per day & tps

Appropriate Vitalik Quote

"When a blockchain project claims â€˜We can do 3,500 TPS because we have a different algorithm,â€™ what we really mean is â€˜We are a centralized pile of trash because we only have 7 nodes running the entire thing.â€™â€

Upside should be getting lots of Dapps and apparently TRON going aggro on it spending $100 million on TronArcade and launched a "$2 billion initiative called Project Genesis" to grow its Dapp market.

One more before Mailbag.

Mailbag

What are your top useful use cases and top useful projects as of February 2019? in the sense that they're providing value to the crypto space just by developing and/or don't look like they'll collapse in a strong breeze. thebiggerboat